Breathe
by MissNessarose
Summary: "You're a Doctor, can't you do something?" "I'm not a midwife, dear boy, but I can certainly try, I suppose." It's always the birth of the first child you've got to worry about, Barbara thinks, but her second's due in a matter of hours and they're locked on the TARDIS. She crosses her fingers and hopes for the best, because what else is there to do? (Rather minor blood/gore)
1. I

**Notes: **So, this was another prompt-inspired piece that ended up being too long to add to the drabbles. This time it was the "place your OTP giving birth in the most awkward/inconvenient situation/time/place" sort of thing. I'd had the idea for the TARDIS baby thing awhile ago, but never had a convenient way to place it, so here it is, finally!

Also, if you read the sort of companion piece to this, "Don't Forget Us", that's a few years beforehand. The baby being born will be their second child, (and technically an "OC" if that's what you want to call it), a daughter (you'll see her later).

And, as noted, Susan is a bit older here, too, though I don't technically know how old in Time Lord's years, and wouldn't dare to guess. Enough, though, that she's been with David for quite awhile. Anyhow, enjoy!

_Mini Warning: There is some minor blood/gore/descriptive stuff in the second part because...well, because babies. It's not serious, but if that's not your thing, here's a quick shoutout to you._

* * *

_Stay calm, _she tells herself. _You've done this before, nothing to worry about. _

Barbara takes a slow breath out and ends up placing the mug she's holding too hard on the counter, effectively breaking the handle off. She sighs and grips the ceramic, her other hand pressed into the edge of the kitchen counter. Closing her eyes, she tries to make sure if everything's in order.

_Already called Ian, that was the first thing. He'll be here._

_His mother will pick up Johnny when he gets out of school, so that's done. _

_Double and triple-checked the hospital bag, that's fine. _

_House is clean. _

_Working on the dishes...except for that mug, and—_

The front door slams open and shut a little too hard for her liking, and she hopes there isn't a scuff mark on the wall from it.

"Barbara!"

"I'm in here," she calls to her husband, and breathes out again, rocking a little into the counter. "Thank you," she hums, feeling Ian's hand press into her lower back.

"How do you feel? Are you alright? Did you—"

She laughs quietly to herself, and turns around to press her back into the counter instead. "I'm fine," she says gently, smiling. "Just fine, Ian. Like last time. Already checked everything. Nothing's gone wrong."

She smirks, and holds up the broken handle between two fingers.

"Well, almost nothing."

He grins. "If that's the only broken thing that you can manage today, I'll be impressed."

Sighing, she rolls her eyes. "I did _not _hurt your hand that badly last time, and I most certainly did not break it!"

"I'm just teasing," he whispers, kissing her cheek affectionately. "I'll tell you, though, you had me rushing out of the school like a crazed man. The secretary's office will have something to talk about for the next few weeks, I'm sure."

Barbara thinks that if she had to list all of the times he's made a fool of himself—with or without her help—that she'd run out of paper.

"You know that they'll find something to gossip about no matter what, and that ninety percent of the time, it'll be about us," she reminds him. Though they'd both been offered their positions at Coal Hill readily enough after their return—their replacements, they were told, weren't that effective, it seems—she knew well enough that the girls in the office were always the ones spreading half of the rumors that buzzed around town. Even over the seven years that followed, it seemed that Barbara and Ian's two-year disappearance was still a hot topic among the secretaries.

Barbara, personally, didn't care much for their talk, since half of the conversations involved theories of her sleeping around during those two years. (And, engagement ring, and later, wedding band afterwards didn't seem to stop the rumors of their son having been conceived before the wedding, either).

But, she thinks, if they want to fantasize her being some desperate mistress to a chemistry teacher, then they can well go ahead for all she cares.

She's distracted from her thoughts when a contraction hits her hard, and she drops the mug's handle aside on the counter in favor of finding Ian's hand instead. Shutting her eyes tight, she swipes blindly until she finds it, clutching until she feels him squeeze back.

"You're alright," he assures her. "Just breathe. How bad is it?"

Barely lasts a minute, she notes, and shakes her head, recovering just as quickly. "Not too terrible. But I want to wait a little longer, they might send us home instead."

"If that's what you want."

He squeezes her hand again—more gently this time—and moves to pull the sink plug behind her.

"You finished here?"

"Well, most likely, I won't get anything else done, so yes."

"Then I'll clean up. You go take a rest, alright?"

Another kiss, and she moves out into the living room to go have a seat in the armchair, one that's damn near falling apart, but a comfortable chair nonetheless that she really doesn't want to toss out. Barbara props her bare feet up on the coffee table, the ceramic bowl of petunias in the center just between her ankles, and she tips her head back against the back of the chair. Quietly, she closes her eyes, and she can hear Ian fussing about in the kitchen, and through their room.

He asks her something about checking the bag, and she almost answers him before her eyes fly open, and she pulls herself up to peer out the kitchen blinds into the backyard. Maybe, she thinks, she's only imagining it—labour does make one's mind a bit unsettled, at the most—but a part of her _knows _that nothing else on Earth could make that whooshing, wheezing noise.

The police box smack in the middle of her backyard is not something she'd expected, either.

_"__Ian!" _

She's silent as he comes skidding into the kitchen—sliding and smashing the left side of his head into the refrigerator as well—and he fusses and worries over her, though she doesn't pay attention.

"Ian, look."

She folds the blinds and nods when he looks, shocked, to her for confirmation, and as if they had nothing better to do, he leads her by the hand out into the backyard. He knocks on the TARDIS door with the back of his hand, and when there's no answer, he presses on the dark blue wood, only to have the door swing open on well-oiled and slightly creaky hinges before them.

"Doctor?" Ian calls in, as he steps into the machine, leaving his wife standing in the yard behind him. The old man is at the controls, babbling about some broken bit or other—and how "well of a landing it was, honestly, child"—and a much older Susan than the one that Ian remembers leaving behind pulls herself up off of the floor.

"Ian!" she cries happily, running to wrap her arms around him. "Oh, I'm so glad that we got here all in one piece. How are you? Is Barbara—"

Slowly, his wife takes a step into the ship, and seeks his hand for some balance. "I'm right here, Susan."

She looks to be in her late twenties to them, now, but the pair of them can still see the sparkle in her eyes when she looks at them.

"You're pregnant," she says slowly, her eyes flashing mischievously between the two of them.

"Second child, actually," Barbara says, breathing out and smiling softly as if she wasn't in pain at the moment. The contraction quickly becomes much, much stronger than the last, though, and she curls forward, her calm facade shattering in an instant.

Ian wraps his arms around her to support her upright as she pants heavily, and she feels Susan's hands on her arm as well.

"I'm fine, really," she breathes, groaning softly. "Just fine."

"But you're not," Susan whispers to her, and their eyes meet. Susan shrugs, grinning herself. "I know. Have a two-year old at home, myself."

"Ours is five," Barbara says, the conversation most definitely difficult, but surely calming. "He's five since last October."

"And from the looks of it, this one is due...well today, right?"

"Technically, it was yesterday...but probably in a matter of hours, I think," she answers, her panting beginning to slow as the pain falls from its peak.

"Sit down," Susan suggests, and Barbara slides from Ian's grasp as the girl leads her to the sofa in the console room—a new rendition since their departure, she notices—and has her sit.

"Despite the circumstances," Barbara sighs, smiling, "I really am happy to see you, Susan. It's been too long." From where she sits, she reaches up to hug the young girl halfway. "It looks like it's been quite awhile for you, too."

"Oh, just a few years," she shrugs. "Grandfather was going to take me and we were going to just drop by for a little while, but it, uh...looks like you're rather busy. We can come back, but I'm not sure how soon. Almost got lost on the way here, you know."

She laughs, a childish sort of giggle that hasn't changed with her maturity.

The Doctor fusses about the controls and presses a few buttons before crossing to join their little grouping.

"I suppose we should be on our way, then," he says, glancing between the two humans.

"It's not...terribly serious," Barbara phrases, shaking her head lightly. "Really, if you've come all this way, we can at _least _spend a few minutes with you. I may be labouring, but not too heavily."

Even as she says this, her hand finds its way to squeeze the arm of the sofa.

"Ian," she sighs, almost serenely. "Is the hot water bottle still in the bag? I checked, but I..."

"I'll go and see."

He's gone for only a few seconds, of course, but it feels like a lifetime for her. Of course, he brings the entire hospital bag with him instead, and plops it down on the floor to dig through the various items, finally pulling out the rubber bottle to set it beside her on the sofa.

"It's empty, though," he says. "But it should only take a minute to fill up. Terribly sorry to ask, but do you have a sink we could use?"

"I'll get it," Susan offers brightly, taking the thing from him, and turning away a bit too quickly.

In the process, she trips straight over Ian's ankles, and slams her hands against the controls to steady herself.

The TARDIS doors are already closed, but when the main rotor begins to bob up and down in the center console, Barbara looks to her husband and feels a flood of panic fill her. Susan apologizes over and over again, her hands shaking as the Doctor shoos her from the console, fiddling here and there between the dials. The look he gives the two humans is far from comforting, and is more...apologetic, Ian thinks.

"I don't know what I hit, I'm sorry!"

Ian calms her down a little, telling her that it's perfectly alright, just an accident, and that these things happen, but Barbara watches the Doctor fuss around and feels strangely like things couldn't be worse.

"Doctor," she says softly. "You...you _can _get us back, right?"

"Well—"

The entire right half of the controls sparks, and a wedge of the hexagonal panels bursts into a series of small flames. Susan shrieks as the Doctor flaps his coat at the fire, the fire soon put down.

"Just a minor malfunction," he assures them, glancing at a monitor here and twisting a knob there, but he sounds all but sure of himself.

Barbara laughs uneasily from where she sits, and tries to convince herself that it's all a mistake, honestly.

"But you can get us home?"

"About that," the Time Lord says slowly. "I'm not actually so sure, my dear."


	2. II

"What do you mean?" Barbara asks, a bit frantically. "You can't just—we have to—"

And suddenly Ian's at her side, calming her down as Susan puts out another small fire in the background.

"It's alright," the Doctor assures her, in this completely gentle tone of voice that Barbara doesn't believe she's heard him use before. "My dear, it is perfectly alright, I swear. Now come on, why don't we have you lie down for a little while, hmm?"

She nods and pretends she doesn't smell smoke as he leads her into the back room, and sits her down on one of the folded beds for a minute. He leaves her side to fiddle with the food machine, and comes back with a glass of ice cubes in one hand. Barbara takes the glass, pops a cube in her mouth, and then sets it aside.

"Thank you," she says, almost sadly, and he sits beside her. "I'm sorry to have this all go to hell, you know."

The Doctor shakes his head, and smiles at her. "If it was anyone's fault, I can assure you that it wasn't yours." He pats her hand affectionately, and then pulls himself to his feet, taking her hand and helping her to lie back on the bed. "However, I should probably make sure that Chesterton hasn't gone and destroyed half of the thing."

Barbara laughs as he goes, nodding to herself, and she folds her hands over her stomach, her thumbs rubbing gently back and forth over the fabric of her top. She doesn't remember sleeping—maybe she did, or maybe she just drifted off for a little while—but Susan comes into the room what seems like moments later, brushing some soot from her pants as she sits on the bed opposite.

"Well?" Barbara asks her, smiling hopefully, and Susan is suddenly very interesting in entwining her hands together.

"Well..." she starts, biting her lip. "It's broken."

"I thought as much," Barbara sighs, and Susan is suddenly rambling, her hands making small but frantic gestures.

"Well, not _broken, _but by the time we even figure out how to fix it, and get a new handle on the panel that caught fire to even _look _inside the mechanisms, we have to rewire the fifth monitor and reroute the—"

"Susan," she says quietly, but firmly. _"Susan. _It's fine. I'm not upset, really."

The girl quiets down, but still can't meet Barbara's eyes.

"I'm really sorry, honestly."

"I'm not upset," she repeats herself, smiling. "A little worried, yes, but not angry. Not at you. Besides, I believe very strongly in your grandfather, and in you. And though it may take quite some time to do everything that you said, I know how very smart you both are, and that you'll manage."

"It's going to take forever," Susan exaggerates, blowing a strand of hair with a burnt tip from her face.

"And we have plenty of time, believe me," Barbara assures her, taking one of the younger girl's hands. "You know how it is, you have one yourself. Babies take time to be born, it's still going to be quite a few hours yet. If it really comes down to it, it's not like you have to fix _all _of the mechanisms. Just enough to get us back home. If you can't even manage that, I'll take an alien hospital, honestly!"

She laughs, and Susan cracks a smile, something that Barbara wanted to see.

"There's nothing to worry about. I put this entire matter into the Doctor's hands right now."

Susan pulls her legs up onto the bed and crosses them underneath her, pouting lightly. "I can't understand why you're so calm," she frowns. "I thought I was going to end up killing David, or at least do _something _stupid."

Barbara laughs again, and she rolls over onto her side. "It's just a way of thinking, I suppose. Last time was exceptionally fine, and I'm sure that this time won't be too different from the first. Besides, between myself and Ian, I think that at least one person has to be rational about things. He...doesn't fit that position too well."

Susan snorts, and slaps a hand to cover her mouth and hide her laughter as the man in question steps into the room.

"We leave you two alone for a few minutes, and you're already gossiping about me," Ian sighs dramatically, feigning hurt, and Susan bursts into laughter as he sits down beside Barbara's feet. Almost instinctively, he places a hand on her hip, and she folds hers over his.

"How are you holding up?"

"I'm just fine," she laughs. "You're all so worried, really."

"Can you blame me?"

She rubs her thumb over the back of his hand, and squeezes when she feels another contraction come on, trying to keep her breath even throughout it.

These are starting to hurt, she realizes, and when she breathes out, it's much shakier than she wants it to be.

"Barbara?"

"How are the repairs?" she asks suddenly, masking the concern she suddenly feels.

"The Doctor's working on them," he promises her. "Looks a right mess, though."

"I'll go and help him," Susan says, and leaves, closing the sliding door behind her. Though the pain's starting to fade, Barbara finds herself still clinging tightly to his hand. She keeps her eyes closed, but feels him stand and come to kneel before the bed, his fingers combing her hair back.

"I thought you said that you were going to be the calm one," he says lightly, laughing. An overwhelming sense of panic floods her mind for absolutely no reason at all, and she feels her lip tremble as she starts to cry.

He sits back down and helps her to sit up, pulling her into his arms as she sobs, his hands rubbing circles into her back and holding her close.

"I don't know what came over me," she apologizes, a minute or so later when she's calmed down.

"It's perfectly alright to be frightened," he chuckles, running a hand along the edge of her face. "We have quite a way of falling into disasters, it seems."

"Quite the understatement, dear," Barbara sighs, leaning further into him. "I'm plenty frightened, yes, but it's more towards the birth itself, and less of the inconvenient situation."

"Fair enough," he agrees, kissing her forehead. "I'll see how it's coming along, then. Just shout if you need anything."

"Mm-hmm," she sighs, lying herself back down and taking another ice cube from the cup. She lies comfortably for just a few minutes when another wave of pressure comes over her, and she pulls herself up heavily to crouch at the side of the bed, her arms folded on top. She hums through it like the others, settling her head on the cool steel rim of the futuristic piece of furniture.

Yes, she knows, she's done this all before, so she's fairly aware of exactly what happens when, a bit unexpectedly, her waters break.

No, she thinks, this mess can't get any worse.

_"__Ian!"_

* * *

**(Note: **So, my intentions a good hour ago was to make this a two-part piece, but it's looking to be more of a three or four part instead. Also, I'd meant to just throw it all up here as I write it, but I have dinner to make, and _The Invasion of Time_ to finish as well. So, this will all most likely be finished tomorrow-I swear, really!)


	3. III

She tries to remember, and the only form of a hospital room that she remembers the TARDIS having during their travels was what amounted to a broom closet with a box of bandages and a jar of futuristic antiseptic halfway hidden under a rusty dustpan.

In short: not this.

This, Barbara notes, is a very nice hospital room. Curtained window, hospital gowns, adjustable bed and all.

Very nice space, really.

Her only issue with the arrangement is the serious _lack _of anything to relieve the building pain. Not that she even had that much the first time, but at least a little _something_ would be nice. She can't read half of the labels on the cabinets, though, and Susan tells her that any of the regular methods that they would use for general situations might not be as effective.

The big problem, of course, is that neither her or her grandfather can assure the couple that if they _did, _in fact, use such things, that it won't leave any dangerous effects behind.

Red lights going off in her head, Barbara found herself plainly refusing any suggestions after that point.

So, she suffers the pain instead. She lies still and hurts and wishes for a multitude of things—but mostly for home. Now, of course, that's not going to happen—even if the ship was fixed soon, it's against their best interests to try moving her now.

The TARDIS dims the lights a little as she makes herself comfortable among the starched sheets and the stiff bed.

"Help me stand," she sighs, her eyes feeling heavy from exhaustion, and she blinks and settles herself into Ian's arms.

"Easy," he says gently, holding her up. She sways a little—back and forth, back and forth—and for a minute they move together by the bedside

"Does that help?" Ian asks her, and she nods, lifting her head to rest on his shoulder.

"It takes some of the pressure off," she tells him, and sighs. "That's fine."

_That's fine, _he thinks.

And it's better than hearing that it hurts.

* * *

"Gah, _Barbara—"_

She crushes his fingers, twisting his wrist a little too unnaturally for his liking, and he tries to adjust his arm properly to ease the pain. Susan comes in, giving him a sorry sort of look, and she looks warily between the discomfort on both of their faces.

"Is everything...alright?"

"This can't wait," Barbara sighs, clinging harder to him, and from that point on everything comes in a sort of blur, the room a dizzy haze and the people in it shadowed blurs against a colored background. She closes her eyes and listens to the rush of voices.

_"__You're a Doctor, can't you do something?" _

_"__I'm not a midwife, dear boy, but I can certainly try, I suppose."_

_"__Susan, hold her leg up for me." _

_"__Grandfather, you're supposed to—"_

_"__Alright, my dear. Push hard for us."_

_"__I'm right here, Barbara." _

_"__Yes, that'll do nicely." _

_"__Hard push." _

_"__Blow."_

_"__Wait." _

_"__That's a bit messy, isn't it?"_

_"__One last push." _

_"__I'm right here, sweetheart." _

A scream falls from her lips and slides up an entire octave as she crushes her husband's hand in her own.

"There we are," the Doctor says softly, and she feels Susan's hand on her arm, rubbing back and forth, Ian holding tight to her other hand.

The cry that shatters the silence is the most beautiful thing that she's ever heard.

"Oh, isn't that beautiful?" Susan says gently, and Ian withdraws to flex his fingers and crack his knuckles before placing his hand back over his wife's.

"It's a girl, Barbara."

He laughs and she lies back and grins as Susan settles the mess of towels and infant into her arms.

"And isn't she perfect?" she beams, tapping her daughter's nose lightly with one finger. The baby squirms in her arms, crying and writhing even in the dim light, trying out new lungs for the first time.

"I know," Barbara says, rocking the baby. "Awfully frightening out here, isn't it? But it's not so bad. There's beautiful things out here, sweetheart."

Their daughter falls asleep soon enough, and Ian gives her a well-deserved kiss.

No, she thinks, she couldn't be happier.

* * *

Ian sits in a hard plastic chair with a styrofoam cup of coffee in one hand as the Doctor comes to sit beside him and Susan.

"So," he says lightly, grinning, "What's our story this time?"

They had, in fact, made their way back to Earth—somewhere in California, if Ian remembers right—and to a proper hospital, but you can't, of course, tell the doctors in the ward that your wife has, in fact, just given birth in a space and time traveling police box. There's a bit of creative liberty in fabricating their own false report, and he's all too interested that they'd let the Doctor come up with things this time.

"I told the nurse that we'd been on a holiday out in the country—old friends of yours, I suppose—and that, upon coming home, we'd gone and crashed our car into a tree! Of course, things had taken their course, and there really wasn't anything else we could do but deliver the child ourselves, so, we did."

He shrugs and sips at his coffee. "I suppose that's believable enough," Ian guesses. It's a bit far-fetched, maybe, but not entirely unheard of.

It'll do for now.

Of course, he soon realizes, there's paperwork to do, and claims to file about the entire mess they've come up with, but the Doctor promises him that he'll deal with all of it. He places the papers on the table before himself and Susan, and—when the nurse finally comes out to say that everything's just fine—shoos Ian away to go and see his wife.

There wasn't any doubt in his mind that Barbara would be alright, and she is, their daughter still cradled in her arms. When he enters, knocking on the door frame to get her attention, she looks up at him and smiles.

"How are you?"

"I'm alright," she says, handing the baby to him. "Sore and absolutely worn, but alright."

She leans back into the bed, very ready for a good rest, and thinks."I heard the story the Doctor came up with," she adds, with an amused look. "Very nice, but at what point do these stories start looking awfully suspicious?"

He rolls his eyes, making her laugh.

"And the real question is, will my mother believe it?"

"Barbara, your mother will hate me until the day that she dies," Ian says, shaking his head. "I could go and jump off of a cliff for her, and I don't think she'd be pleased then, either."

"Ian!"

"I'm serious," he scoffs. "It's ridiculous, really."

She grins, though, and looks over the infant in his arms.

"We've got to call her something, eventually," she states.

He nods, and doesn't really answer. "And what were you thinking?"

Barbara closes her eyes, humming to herself, and wonders.

"You said that you'd liked Elizabeth," he reminds her, and she nods lazily.

"That sounds fine."

He repeats the name on his tongue just to see how it sounds, and knows it's right when the baby pulls hard on his fingers with one tiny hand. Their daughter yawns and rolls over a little in his arms, and he can't help but smile. She's so tiny, beautiful, and absolutely perfect. Opening her eyes, Barbara watches him with a smirk.

"I have a feeling she's going to be quite her father's daughter," she says. "You're not going to let her go, are you?"  
He shakes his head. "Never."


End file.
